Labour Party - Charters School

Labour Party
Labour Party, British political party whose historic links with trade
unions have led it to promote an active role for the state in the creation of
economic prosperity and in the provision of social services. In opposition to
the Conservative Party, it has been the major democratic socialist party
in Britain since the early 20th century.

History
The Labour Party was born at the turn of the 20th century out of the
frustration of working-class people at their inability to field parliamentary
candidates through the Liberal Party, which at that time was the dominant
social-reform party in Britain. In 1900 the Trades Union Congress (the
national federation of British trade unions) cooperated with the Independent
Labour Party (founded in 1893) to establish a Labour Representation
Committee, which took the name Labour Party in 1906. The early Labour
Party lacked a nationwide mass membership or organization; up to 1914 it
made progress chiefly through an informal agreement with the Liberals not
to run candidates against each other wherever possible. After World War
I the party made great strides, owing to a number of factors: first, the
Liberal Party tore itself apart in a series of factional disputes; second, the
1918 Representation of the People Act extended the electoral franchise to
all males aged 21 or older and to women aged 30 or older; and third, in
1918 Labour reconstituted itself as a formally socialist party with a
democratic constitution and a national structure. The party’s new program,
“Labour and the New Social Order,” drafted by Fabian
Societyleaders Sidney and Beatrice Webb, committed Labour to the pursuit
of full employment with a minimum wage and a maximum workweek,
democratic control and public ownership of industry, progressive taxation,
and the expansion of educational and social services. By 1922 Labour had
supplanted the Liberal Party as the official opposition to the
ruling Conservative Party.
In 1924, with Liberal support, James Ramsay MacDonald formed the first
Labour government, though his minority administration was brought down
less than one year later over questions of its sympathy for the new Soviet
state and over alleged communist influence within the party. Labour
emerged from the 1929 election as the largest party in Parliament, though
again it lacked an overall majority and had to form a coalition
government with the Liberals. In 1931 the party suffered one of the
severest crises in its history when, faced with demands to cut public

expenditure as a condition for receiving loans from foreign banks,
MacDonald defied the objections of most Labour officials and formed a
coalition government with Conservatives and Liberals. In the ensuing
election Labour’s parliamentary representation was reduced from 288 to
52. The party remained out of power until 1940, when Labour ministers
joined a wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill.

                    Ramsay MacDonald.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Labour achieved a spectacular recovery in the general election of 1945,
when it won 393 seats and a comfortable 146-seat overall majority in
the House of Commons. Most commentators have attributed this victory to
the electorate’s overwhelming desire for social reform and its determination
to avoid a return to the interwar era of economic depression and
unemployment. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the
Labour governments of the following six years built on the state’s recent
experience of wartime intervention to construct a postwar
political consensus based on a mixed economy, a much more extensive

system of social welfare (including a National Health Service), and a
commitment to the pursuit of full employment. Postwar economic recovery
proved slow, however, and in the 1950 election Labour’s majority was
reduced to five. In 1951 it lost power to the Conservatives.

                 Attlee, ClementClement Attlee.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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Throughout the 1950s the question of whether, and how, to adapt the
party’s traditional socialist approach to an affluent society—especially the
question of the nationalization of industry—divided Labour’s ranks.
“Bevanites” (followers of former health minister Aneurin Bevan) wanted a
more socialist economic policy and less dependence on the United States;
the “revisionists,” led by Hugh Gaitskell, Attlee’s successor as party leader,
wished to drop the commitment to the nationalization of industry. Labour
did not regain power until 1964 under Harold Wilson, who was prime
minister until 1970. Wilson attempted to resolve the problem of Britain’s
relative economic decline by pursuing a strategy of technocratic reform,
corporatist relations with business and labour leaders, and a system of
“indicative” economic planning, in which the government attempted
to facilitate economic development in directions of predicted growth. The
party held power again from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then
under James Callaghan. Labour’s narrow five-seat majority in the election
of October 1974 diminished through the term, forcing the party to enter a
“Lib-Lab” pact with the Liberal Party. Although hampered by a small

majority, the Labour Party pursued controversial policies, including support
for Britain’s continued membership in the European
Community and devolution in Scotland and Wales, which was rejected by
referenda in 1979. Ultimately, the moderate social-democratic approach
exemplified by the Wilson-Callaghan years foundered on the twin rocks of
Britain’s chronic economic problems and Labour’s worsening relations with
its trade union allies.
Following the “Winter of Discontent” of 1978–79, when Britain suffered a
series of major strikes by trade unions, the party was ousted from office by
the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher. Subsequently, Labour
underwent a period of considerable internal turmoil. Aided by the leaders of
some major trade unions, the party’s left wing succeeded in forcing through
a number of organizational reforms that enhanced the power of grassroots
activists and trade unions in the selection of parliamentary candidates and
party leaders. In response, a number of leading parliamentarians and
supporters seceded from Labour and founded the Social Democratic
Party (SDP) in 1981. In the 1983 general election Callaghan’s
successor, Michael Foot, presented a radical manifesto—dubbed the
“longest suicide note in history” by Gerald Kaufman, a Labour member of
Parliament and critic of the party’s reforms—that proposed extensive
nationalization of industry, economic planning, unilateral nuclear
disarmament, and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the
European Community. The result was Labour’s worst national electoral
defeat in more than 50 years. Foot was replaced later that year by Neil
Kinnock, a politician with leftist credentials who set about reestablishing
Labour as a credible national electoral force. Kinnock’s “modernization”
process, which involved a reevaluation of party policies and the elimination
of extremists—including the Trotskyist wing, Militant Tendency—
contributed to Labour’s electoral revival but was not sufficient to deprive the
Conservatives of their governing majorities in the general elections of 1987
and 1992. Nevertheless, the process was continued by Kinnock’s
successors as party leader, John Smith(1992–94) and Tony Blair (1994–
2007). In a series of programmatic and organizational changes, the party
reembraced the mixed economy, declared its support for
European integration, dropped its unpopular unilateral nuclear
disarmament policy, rewrote the clause of its constitution that committed it
to the public ownership of industry, and gave serious consideration to a
new range of constitutional reforms, including devolution, voting reform,
and reform of the House of Lords.
This “New Labour” agenda, combined with highly professionalized political
marketing, produced a landslide victory in the general election of 1997,
returning Labour to power after 18 years of Conservative Party rule and
securing Tony Blair’s appointment as prime minister. Through its policy of
All Women Short Lists (AWSLs), the Labour Party dramatically increased

the number of women in Parliament; in 1997 it elected 101 women
members, nearly 25 percent of all Labour parliamentarians, bringing the
total number of women members to a record 120.

With a decisive 179-seat majority in Parliament, the Blair government
accepted some of Margaret Thatcher’s policies but also carried out several
of the reforms it promised in its manifesto, including abolishing the right of
most hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords and introducing devolved
legislative assemblies in Scotland and Wales after successful referenda. It
signed the Social Chapter of the Treaty on European Union, which sought
to harmonize European social policies on issues such as working
conditions, equality in the workplace, and worker health and safety; helped
to forge an agreement between Republicans and Unionists in Northern
Ireland; modernized the format of “Prime Minister’s Question Time,” during
which the prime minister is required to answer questions from the
opposition in person; and promised eventual referenda on the introduction
of the euro, the European Union’s single currency, and reforms of
the electoral system. In 2001 the party won a second consecutive landslide
victory, capturing a 167-seat majority—the largest-ever second-term
majority for any party in the House of Commons. Despite the party’s
electoral success, Blair’s leadership style was often criticized by his Labour
opponents as dictatorial. Blair also faced internal dissent over his support
for the U.S. policy of military confrontation with Iraq in 2003, when 139
Labour members of Parliament backed an amendment opposing the
government’s policy. Nevertheless, in 2005 Labour won its third
consecutive general election (albeit with a significantly reduced majority) for
the first time in the party’s history. In 2007 Blair resigned the prime
ministership in favour of his longtime chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon
Brown. In the subsequent general election of 2010, Labour won 258 seats
in the House of Commons and lost its majority. Brown stepped down as
leader of the party and on May 11 tendered his resignation as prime
minister.

Conservative Party
Conservative Party, byname Tories, in the United Kingdom, a political
party whose guiding principles include the promotion of private property

and enterprise, the maintenance of a strong military, and the preservation
of traditional cultural values and institutions. Since World War
I the Conservative Party and its principal opponent, the Labour Party, have
dominated British political life.

History
The Conservative Party is the heir, and in some measure the continuation,
of the old Tory Party, members of which began forming “conservative
associations” after Britain’s Reform Bill of 1832 extended electoral rights to
the middle class. The name Conservative was first used as a description of
the party by John Wilson Croker writing in the Quarterly Review in 1830.
The first Conservative government was formed by Sir Robert Peel, whose
program, set out in the Tamworth Manifesto (1834), stressed the timely
reform of abuses, the necessity of law and order, an orderly system of
taxation, and the importance of both landed interests and trade and
industry.
Prospects of an extended period of Conservative rule disappeared in 1846
when the party split over the repeal of protectionist regulations known as
the Corn Laws, and for most of the next 30 years they were out of
government. The party was reorganized by Benjamin Disraeli, prime
minister for a few months in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880.
The Conservative Central Office, a professional organization established by
Disraeli in 1870, and the newly formed National Union, which drew together
local voluntary associations, gave the party additional unity and strength. At
the same time, Disraeli’s emphasis on social reform to reduce the
enormous disparity in the living conditions of rich and poor, combined with
a strong, activist imperial and foreign policy, helped the party
to transcend class barriers. Disraeli’s contribution was to transform the
party from one that spoke primarily for landed interests to one that could
draw supporters from the middle class and from newly enfranchised
workers.

The Conservative Party was further strengthened in 1886 when it allied
with the Liberal Unionists, a faction of the Liberal Party that opposed the
policy of Home Rule in Ireland put forward by the Liberal leader William
Ewart Gladstone. Thus reinforced, the Conservatives held office for all but
3 of the next 20 years, first under the leadership of Lord Salisbury and then
under Arthur Balfour. A split over tariff policy caused them to lose the
election of 1906 in a disastrous landslide, and they did not regain power
until they joined a wartime coalition with the Liberals in May 1915. In the

election of 1918, most of the candidates elected to support the coalition
were Conservatives.

In 1922 Conservative backbenchers forced the party’s withdrawal from the
coalition and thereby precipitated the resignation of party leader Austen
Chamberlain. The rebellion owed much to the revulsion felt by many
backbenchers toward the Liberal leader and prime minister, David Lloyd
George, and to their unease over some of the more interventionist reforms
introduced by Liberal ministers. A surprise election called in December
1923 by Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin proved to be a
miscalculation that briefly reunited the ailing Liberal Party and opened the
way to a minority Labour Party government, though the Conservatives
remained the largest single party and were able to regain power the
following year. Apart from another brief Labour administration in 1929–31,
the Conservatives dominated national office until 1945. Baldwin emerged
as a popular figure and the architect of what he called the “new
Conservatism,” an attempt to appeal to the middle class through a modest
movement away from the laissez-faire economic policies that the party had
advocated since 1918.
Baldwin’s successor as party leader and prime minister, Neville
Chamberlain, was forced from office in May 1940 by his own backbenchers
because of his poor leadership in the early months of World War II.
Chamberlain was replaced by another Conservative, Winston Churchill,
who formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. Although
Churchill led the country to victory in the war, he failed to lead his own party
to success in the first postwar election in 1945. The party’s stunning defeat
can be attributed to the electorate’s desire for social reform and economic
security, as well as its inclination to blame the Conservatives for not having
done enough in the 1930s to alleviatemass unemployment or to thwart
the aspirations of dictators.

While in opposition, the party reformed its policies and organization. It
created a new youth movement (the Young Conservatives) and an
education wing (the Conservative Political Centre), revived the party’s
research department, and undertook a drive to increase party membership.

The party returned to power in 1951 and maintained office until 1964.
Under the leadership of Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan,
and Alec Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party came to accept the key
tenets of the “postwar consensus” with Labour—that is, it recognized the
state’s responsibility for maintaining full employment and endorsed the use
of techniques of economic-demand management, based on the theories
of John Maynard Keynes, to achieve that objective. Moreover, the party did
not seek to reverse the welfare measures nor most of the public

ownership of industry that had been introduced by Labour in 1945–51. The
Conservative government did embark on an extensive house-building
program and was able to reduce income taxes while increasing spending
on the National Health Service. In the early 1960s, however, an economic
downturn and a series of scandals—one of which involved an adulterous
affair between the secretary of war and an alleged Soviet spy—undermined
the party’s support.

From 1964 to 1979 the Conservatives held power alternately with the
Labour Party. Under the prime ministership of Edward Heath(1970–74), the
party pursued policies designed to deregulate finance and industry.
Economic problems led to confrontations with the trade unions, especially
the National Union of Miners, and to internal party dissension. Heath called
an election in 1974 and the party lost, allowing Labour to form a minority
government. After losing a second national election to Labour in 1974,
Heath was succeeded as party leader by Margaret Thatcher, who during
her four years as leader of the opposition (1975–79) frequently stated her
determination to pursue deregulation and supply-side economic reforms.

As prime minister after the Conservatives’ victory over Labour in 1979,
Thatcher attempted to “roll back the state” in the economic sphere, weaken
the power of the trade unions, and reduce welfare programs. She
combined this ambitious economic agenda—which included the
privatization of several state-owned industries and the sale of more than
1.5 million council houses (publicly owned houses) to their tenants—
with moral traditionalism and skepticism toward further
European integration through the European Economic
Community (ultimately succeeded by the European Union). Critics both
inside and outside the Conservative Party contended that the “cult of the
market” did much to disintegrate the social order, yet Thatcher was able to
lead her party to resounding victories in the general elections of 1983 and
1987, owing in part to her decisive leadership in the Falkland Islands
War (1982) and to deep divisions in the opposition. Her eventual
resignation as party leader (and therefore as prime minister) in 1990
reflected the combined impact of a number of factors, including public
protests over a proposal to finance local government through a flat-rate
“poll tax,” a series of bitter conflicts with some of her senior ministers, her
strident and authoritarian style, and a growing sense among backbenchers
that she might prove unable to withstand the electoral challenge of a newly
united and considerably reformed Labour Party.

Thatcher’s successor, John Major, had held senior ministerial office for only
a brief period prior to his selection as prime minister. His
less charismatic political style did not prevent him from winning the general

election of 1992, but he had to contend with a prolonged economic
recession, internal party conflict over the question of European integration,
and dismally low opinion-poll ratings. The party’s economic policies were
questioned after Britain was forced to leave the European exchange-rate
mechanism and devalue the pound in 1992. Further hampered by a series
of personal scandals involving prominent officials of Major’s government
and facing a rejuvenated Labour Party under Tony Blair, the Conservatives
suffered a crushing defeat in the general election of 1997, losing more than
half their seats in the House of Commons.

Soon after the 1997 elections, Major resigned as party leader. With some
potential leaders suddenly ineligible because they had lost their
parliamentary seats, William Hague, former secretary of state for Wales,
was elected party leader. Like Disraeli more than a century earlier, the 36-
year-old Hague—the youngest Conservative leader in 200 years—set out
to reform the party’s organization, re-establish its appeal outside traditional
Conservative strongholds, rebuild its image, and end the factional strife that
had plagued the Conservatives during their last years in power. Despite
those efforts, Hague’s tenure was marked by continued discord, and in
2001 the party suffered a second consecutive landslide defeat to the
Labour Party. In 2005, under former home secretary Michael Howard, the
Conservatives won some 30 additional seats in the House of Commons but
remained well shy of a parliamentary majority. Howard promptly resigned
as party leader, and David Cameron presided over the gradual ascent of
the Conservatives over the next five years. Having captured 307 seats in
the general election of 2010, the Conservatives became the largest party in
the House of Commons, but their failure to win an outright majority led to
a hung Parliament. Conservative and Labour Party leaders met with
the Liberal Democrats over the ensuing days in an effort to secure enough
seats to form a new government. When it appeared that those talks would
result in a formal “Lib-Con” coalition, Brown announced his resignation and
Cameron was confirmed as prime minister of Britain’s first coalition
government since World War II.